Sheep being loaded for live export to the Middle East. Photo: Erin Jonasson

The reports that thousands of sheep died on the Livestock Shipping Services' Bader III in August last year during searing Middle East temperatures, have prompted calls from Labor and the Greens for the company's export licence to be suspended.

The Bader III loaded sheep in Adelaide and then in Fremantle before travelling to the Qatar and the United Arab Emirates where it experienced a day of extreme heat.

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Of the more than 4000 animals that died, 3256 were loaded in Adelaide and 923 were from Fremantle. As a result of an investigation of the incident the exporter had to provide 10 per cent more space for sheep on its next shipment that left in November.

Animal welfare activists have seized on the case of further damning evidence that the trade is unsustainable and cruel and say the industry cannot be trusted to regulate the industry.

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Animals Australia said the exporter responsible is already under under investigation for serious breaches of live export regulations in Jordan and Gaza.

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“The suffering of these animals is too horrific even to imagine. In these temperatures, the ship would have turned into an oven, with these thousands of individual sheep literally baking alive,” said Animals Australia Campaign Director Lyn White.

Ms White said even supporters of the live export trade should see that animals should not be exported during the extreme heat of the Middle Eastern summer.

"This is just another in a long list of incidents resulting in mass animal suffering that was entirely unnecessary and preventable," Ms White said.

Labor MP Kelvin Thomson, a vocal critic of the trade, said the exporter should have its licence suspended.

"The claim that stopping live exports will damage Australian meat producers is not correct. 2013 broke records for exports of sheep meat and boxed beef," Mr Thomson said.

"If Australia's claims to be concerned about animal welfare are to mean something, there have to be consequences for this debacle."

Greens senator Lee Rhiannon also called for the end to live exports.

"The only solution to end this horrific suffering is to end live exports and rebuild our domestic meat manufacturing by moving to chilled box meat exports."

Australian Livestock Export Council chairman Peter Kane said it was "a very unfortunate event" especially at time when the industry was working so hard to improve animal welfare, which remained the industry's top priority.

"Clearly when events like this happen it is distressing for everyone, including the exporter. We are hurt by failures when they happen," Mr Kane said.

He said imposing extra conditions on the LSS' export licence would in effect have a financial penalty on the company.

He rejected tough penalties because the incident was not a "blatant disregard" for the export rules.

A spokesman for Agriculture Minister Barnaby Joyce said there was a system in place to ensure incidents like this were minimised and remained infrequent.

‘‘The system isn’t about shutting down the trade, it’s about policing it,’’ he said.